Originally published at National Catholic Register
Three years after controversy erupted across Canada and internationally over “mass graves” allegedly located near the residential schools for Indigenous children that once operated in Canada, evidence continues to accumulate that these claims lack any factual foundation.
This comprehensive absence of substantiation was highlighted in an Oct. 14 article by Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady, titled “Canada’s Unproven Mass-Grave Scandal.” The article referenced a bill that was introduced last month in the House of Commons of Canada that would criminalize “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation.”
The initial allegation regarding the discovery of unmarked graves was made in May 2021 in Kamloops, British Columbia. Based on the findings of a ground-penetrating radar survey of an orchard located beside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, issued a press release stating the survey had provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” who had been students at the school and whose deaths there had been undocumented.
But in late May of this year, Canadian journalist Terry Glavin reported in the National Post that Casimir has
